New Travel Trailer, first time towing with my Tacoma

As I have recently asked a few questions here about towing and such, I can now share my experience.

My wife and I picked up this brand new 2022 Coleman Rubicon travel trailer. Single axle, dry weight is just over 3800 #'s. We purchased in Reno, NV, which is over two mountain ranges from us. We had to climb over the 7200' summit from Reno into Lake Tahoe, then out the other side of the Tahoe Basin over the 7300' Echo Pass summit on highway 50 to get it home. I had to get down to 2nd gear to keep the RPMs at 3,000 in a couple places, but it held 3rd gear most of the time going uphill. It's about 115 miles from the dealership in Reno to our place near Placerville.

Truck is stock so far. I have a set of brand new Bilstein 5100s, OME front coils, and a set of Hellwig "helper leafs" for the rears, but I haven't been able to get them installed yet, was hoping to have them in before we brought the trailer home. But, it towed like a dream anyway.

You can sort of see the weight distribution hitch I had them install for me in the last picture. I also had a brake controller added. I have never used a weight distribution hitch, or a brake controller before on any vehicle, so I wasn't sure what to expect. I can say both seemed to work flawlessly. Never once had the slightest feeling the brakes were not going to stop us, nor did the trailer give the slightest indication of control issues while towing. I kept it under 60 MPH all the way home, even on the straight sections of freeway. On the steep downhill sections, I kept it under 50 MPH, as most of highway 50 downhill is very twisty and one lane each way, non-divided.

So, after having done some research on brake controllers, I was caught off guard by the unit they installed at the dealership. It's a EchoSmart controller, bluetooth controlled, and goes inline with your 7 pin trailer light connector. You control the settings entirely from your bluetooth tablet or phone, and you can even press a button to have it deploy the trailer breaks when you are not using your vehicle brakes at all, if you want.

editing to add some more info. It has solar panel on the roof, capability to add 2 additional panels for max remote camping battery charging needs. Also 2 5 gallon propane tanks. One slide out.

And now.... pics, pics, pics!

At the dealership, they are installing the hitch and controller, while another guy gives us the whole spiel on "this is this, that is that" on how to use our new trailer.



Just got it safely home, still hooked to the truck.



And after we unhooked it.

 

Nice!!!!!!